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magacious writes "Gtec has showcased a computer that can read your mind over at the CeBIT trade show in Germany. Designed primarily to help those who can't write or speak, the system makes use of a skull cap and wireless technology to transform brain waves into letters. It's the first patient-ready computer-brain interface, according to its Austrian makers. It takes around 30 seconds per letter for the computer to recognise what you're saying the first time you use it, according to Gtec, but this improves vastly with practice. '"One second per letter is very tough," Gtec's Engelbert Grunbacher said, adding users can usually easily get to five or 10 letters per minute. "You learn to be relaxed, focused. You improve."' It might look quite wacky (pictures here) and at €9,000 the system is not cheap, but it could help enhance the lives of many people who have a great deal to say but no real way of saying it."

I would hope this has to go through the same clinical trials that introducing a drug would. The fact that you can "learn to be relaxed, focused. You improve." means that you're changing the frequency and wavelength of your brain's electrical output to comply with the requirements of this device.

Me, I'd want to be damned sure that wasn't going to introduce long-term side effects before using it.

This is just another tired P300 system. Yes, it works, eventually, with practice, and with a messy setup. But the signal was discovered in 1965, and this is far from the first implementation of it, or even the first mass-market computerized commercial one (which I think was IntendiX, though that was pretty recently).

I'm thinking of some cases where people have been required to provide data that's only in their heads like passwords.

You have the right to avoid self-incrimination.You apparently do not have the right to not provide data stored on some media you own to the police when ordered to by a court.With a moderate amount of slippery slopiness and easy technology the brain could start to be considered just another data storage device.